Extractors are a type of surface cleaning apparatus which have a reservoir to apply a cleaning solution to, e.g., carpet and a nozzle to extract the used cleaning solution from the carpet. A separation system is provided to separate the used cleaning solution, which is entrained in dirty air that is drawn into the extractor, and to store the used cleaning solution in a used reservoir. Typically, the nozzle of an extractor is not designed to remove large particulate matter from carpet (e.g., popcorn) and accordingly, a carpet may have to be cleaned using a vacuum cleaner prior to using an extractor to clean the carpet.
Various different surface cleaning apparatus are known which use different cleaning stages that are arranged in series. These include EP 1707094 (Kim et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 7,473,289 (Oh et at.) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,135,552 (Weistra). Various different extractor designs are also known.